One Bullet
by Lautari
Summary: Timelines interweave, some people will always find each other...
1. Chapter 1

November meant the nights had grown crisp in Lake Tahoe. Sarah Connor had grown accustomed to Reese's warmth beside her, wrapped around her, like the protector he was meant to be. But at some time during the night she always found herself looking for him. The soldier and child of war wasn't used to the soft mattress or sheets. Small sounds would wake him, and extreme silence put him on edge. Even with Pops on guard at all times, he slept with his gun within reach.

"Reese?" Sarah whispered into the dark bedroom. She rolled over and scanned the floor. She'd started finding him on hardwood floor of their small bedroom not long after settling into the little rented farmhouse. She would usually join him and pull sheets down on top of them, but now with no sign of him, she wrapped them about her naked body and tiptoed out of the room and down the creaky stairs.

"Reese?" she whispered again, opening the squeaky screen door.

"Here."

Her eyes found him sitting on the porch swing, peering up at bright full moon. He smiled, though distracted, taking in the sight of her. "You're so beautiful."

"What are you doing out here?"

He shook his head as she joined him. "I don't know. Grieving. Waiting."

Sarah took his hand. "I'm sorry."

Kyle stroked her cheek. "John loved you, Sarah. He is last words to me were "take care of her for me." Everything you thought you were fighting for, training for….it was worth it. I could still see a glimpse of him. John would have wanted it this way. To keep you safe…ensure that mankind had a future."

He sounded like he was trying to assure himself.

She swallowed, a tear escaping, for who she didn't know. Was it for Kyle, ridden with survivor's guilt, or for the son that had slipped through her fingers despite everything that she had supposedly prepared him for? She'd allowed herself to indulge when she had laid eyes on him in the hospital. John had her Dad's eyes, her smile….Kyle's curls, his mannerisms. It brought her own guilt to the surface, knowing that in another timeline, another life, the three of them together in a room would've been something she desperately wanted.

She had yet to feel the small kicks in her womb, them being all that was left of the man she loved. Ashamedly, she wondered if she wanted to.

"He'll exist," Kyle broke into her thoughts as if he could read them.

Oddly, she found that comforting. "How do you know?"

Kyle's eyes were troubled and he watched the horizon. "It's like there's a shadow in my peripheral. I can see something coming but I just don't know what." He shook his head. "The future isn't set, but…some things can't be cheated. Timelines are interweaved. Some people are always going to find each other."

"We stopped it though."

He couldn't meet her gaze. "Think Sarah, someone sent Pops back to save you, from a much later future I think. We're missing a piece of the puzzle."

Sarah opened her mouth, but no words formed. She stood abruptly, and pulled the sheets tightly around herself. "So what, we have another mission!?" Her despair was palatable, not accustomed to the world's darkness like Reese.

"We stay vigilant," Kyle whispered, standing and grasping her fingers in his own. "I know you're pregnant, Sarah."

Her lower lip quivered and she squeezed her eyes shut against the tears. He pressed his lips to her forehead. "You said you have one bullet to fire at the heart of Skynet….maybe it's always going to be John."


	2. Chapter 2

_From this point on, things might get a little hairy with timelines. I didn't understand why Terminator: Genisys omitted T3, but I'm sticking with original canon for the most part. Elements of Terminator: Salvation will be less important, but there will be nods to it._

 _Please enjoy!_

TTTTTTT

"Damn it's hot," Sarah growled, from the shower. Kyle raised an eyebrow and grinned at her shadow through the curtain. It had changed a lot from the first time he had seen it on the brick wall in 1984. In the handful of months since, her once slender form was unrecognizable.

Kyle spit out the toothpaste. "Hurry up."

"Why are we going to Los Angeles, anyway?" Sarah threw back the curtain and steam rolled around her form.

At six months pregnant, her belly was round and curved. In bed at night, Kyle would lay his head against it and listen to the heartbeat. "What if it's a girl?" Sarah asked one night. He only smiled. "He's not."

"How do you _know_?"

How could he explain that he knew John's heartbeat? John had held him against his chest after offering his hand in the sewer all those years ago. Its rhythm and John's whispers had soothed him. He'd heard it again while floating in and out of consciousness after he'd flown his compromised helicopter into a convoy of trucks transporting newly manufactured Terminators. John held him then as well, on a long truck ride back to base, demanding that he stay alive while his left leg was being set and his shirt was being cut away from burned skin. John was angry with him for weeks after, and Kyle hadn't understood why then. When John had nearly been killed rescuing him from the prison camp, Kyle listened to the mechanical pulse of the machine keeping his leader alive for days, while refusing to leave his side. Kate sat with him as well, stroking her own pregnant belly.

Shaking away memories of a time that no longer existed, Kyle splashed water on his face. "I have an old friend there."

TTTTTTTTTTT

"Reese, I don't understand. Who's Kate Brewster?"

Kyle considered pretending to not hear over the roar of the Jeep on the highway, "She was…John's second in command."

Sarah frowned and swiped at some hair that had pulled free from her ponytail. "I thought you were."

Kyle snorted. "Not like her. There was no one John trusted more in the world. Not even me. She knew everything he did."

Of that, he was sure.

"Everything?" She paused. "But it doesn't matter anymore. That future is gone."

"It matters to me!" Kyle snapped. "That future is gone, but it still existed. The people in it mattered, Sarah."

"Judging by Kyle Reese's heart rate there is a 48% chance of wrecking if the argument escalates."

Kyle growled at Pops, nearly forgotten in the backseat, and swerved off road and skid to a stop on dirt and gravel. The engine was barely off before he jerked the door opened and jumped out. Sarah gripped her door handle, ready to follow him, but decided against it. She watched his broad, tense shoulders. Underneath his shirt were scars that she learned and traced with her fingertips while holding Reese when nightmares shook him at night. "Who is Kate Brewster?"

"Katherine Brewster was the daughter of Lt. General Robert Brewster," Pops stated in his flat monotone. "He was the military head of CRS Autonomous Weapons Division before his death on Judgement Day, July 25, 2004. She was studying to be a veterinarian and after Skynet became self-aware, was one of the head physicians in John Connor's unit as well as his second in command."

"Her father was involved in Skynet's creation?"

"Correct."

Sarah swallowed and touched her belly. "It never stops, does it?"

"I have no knowledge of this future, only the past from which I come."

She rolled her eyes and gingerly opened her door and lowered herself to the ground. Carefully, she held onto her belly while navigating the path down the embankment to the little brook Kyle was pacing beside. He heard her coming and offered his hand, but refused eye contact.

"Kyle," she said softly. "I'm sorry, I don't want to fight. But you have to help me understand. I know you and Pops are up to something. I know you're nervous."

"I'm just making sure, Sarah. I want our son to grow up without having to look over his shoulder. And if he does, then I want him to be ready."

Sarah swallowed, dread building in her stomach, but she pushed it down. "Ok, and how does Kate Brewster fit into all this?"

"I had Pops track her down, with the information I knew about her." He grinned. "Not surprisingly, she had no presence on social media. She loved L.A. so I figured she'd be there." He nodded while he spoke, as if trying to work it out loud. "If anyone would know anything about John and what he was up to, it would be her."

"So you want to tie up loose ends?"

Kyle nodded slowly.

"Why do you think he would seek her out in this timeline?"

"Well her father was a military connection, but…I know you couldn't see it, but something inside him was still organically John."

Sarah reached for his fingers. "Kyle…"

He jerked away. "No, Sarah! You didn't know him like I did."

She crossed her arms. "I'm aware. But I know what I saw."

Kyle smirked. "Obviously not. Because when John showed up at the bunker, he blinked out coordinates."

"What?"

"Coordinates were a trick he said he learned from you. The blinking and hand signals were communications we developed."

"What were the coordinates?"

"Kate's apartment. We did a cross check on the info I had and Pop's went down last weekend. It's her."

"So that's where he went."

He cupped her face in his hands. "Look, John – what was left – wanted us to protect her. I'm going to honor that. If he thought there was danger, then we need to be on guard. We need to make sure no tech survived. If it did, maybe we can use it to our advantage."

"Why is she so important?"

Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Kate was his wife."


	3. Chapter 3

Little else was said on the ride into Los Angeles.

Sarah chewed her nails nervously as evening fell and Pops was the ever quiet sentinel. Neither noticed the life and the buzz of the city around them, but Kyle, born after the world descended into darkness was keenly aware of the manicured lawns, fields of crops, clean water….even stopping for a moment to take in the lights on their descent into the city. It was not the 2017 he remembered. It was one they had dreamed of, those who remembered the world as it was probably dreaming of it more.

Sarah clasped his hand while the engine idled and he broke out of the trance. "Sorry, I just…I was never supposed to see this."

She squeezed his hand and he put the vehicle back into drive and pulled back onto the road.

Kate's apartment was in Silver Lake. She had mentioned it once, during a quiet trip into the city to find a small band of humans who had contacted them after setting up a stronghold inside a network of three townhouses. It had been her first time back and the grief had been written on her face. _"This was my home," she said_.

Unlike John, she had lived a charmed life before Judgement Day. While she was an extremely strong woman, her softness is what John had sought in the darkness. She was the first thing he'd wanted to see upon returning to base. Their quarters, though small, was a home she had made for them. Faded quilts that she'd pulled from rubble and cleaned were draped over beds and John had taken a small blue china cup from a cupboard once while they were on a supply run. He'd wrapped it gingerly and tucked it inside his flight suit. "For Kate," he'd told him sheepishly, no doubt to add to the mismatched set of dishes she insisted they ate canned beans off of.

Pop's directions took them to a neighborhood that Kyle recognized. As part of TechCom, he and three others had taken cover in the ruins of the now brightly lit Texaco station two blocks back while they set up hidden radio posts throughout the city. "Here," the Terminator said.

The lovely gray brick building had manicured beds with blooms already trying to show themselves in late April. The weather had given them a mild winter and spring, the evenings still had Sarah wrapping a cardigan tightly around herself and belly. "Let's go," she murmured taking the lead.

She peered inside and found the buzzer for "Brewster." Kate hadn't start going by Connor until later in their marriage, around the time their first child was born….around the time John had found him. John had insisted that she keep some distance from him for safety. She had fought with him over it, but the first time John had called her by his last name he had radioed into base and asked snarkily for Katherine Connor. A huge grin split his face when she called him an idiot after he'd called her "Mrs. Connor."

"Hello?"

Kyle swallowed, recognizing her voice. He'd heard it so many times over radio transmissions, but it had been a long time. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Kate Brewster?"

"Who's asking?"

He grinned. "I was a friend of John Connor."

There was a long pause and he and Sarah exchanged nervous glances. They both almost wished that name would have no meaning, but Kate's voice was a whisper when she spoke again. "He told you about me?"

Kyle closed his eyes. "Everything."

There was another long pause before they were buzzed in.

TTTTTTTTTT

Sarah had bade Pops to stay with the Jeep, but Kate still regarded them suspiciously between the slit in the door she allowed. Kyle knew she had a handgun in her grasp on the other side of the door. Her gaze softened when she saw Sarah's belly. "You said you knew John?"

"Yeah, uh, we were in the military together," Kyle blurted, remembering John mentioned a stint in the military shortly before meeting Kate. "I'm Kyle Reese."

"And I'm Sarah…Reese."

Kate seemed to drop her guard and held the door open. She laid the handgun on the table next to the door casually and shrugged. "Sorry. Can't be too careful. John was teaching me how to shoot."

She looked exactly as she had when Kyle had met her as a teenager, minus her pregnancy. She was always beautiful, but war and worry for her husband weighed on her. She tried not to let it show publicly, but he'd seen her and John in quiet moments, when John would sneak up behind her and press his face in her hair and knead her back…much like he did with Sarah. They could be standing in the middle of a med tent and Kate would smile and close her eyes and then giggle at something he whispered to her and swat at him. He'd been a little jealous of their relationship, one that had been forged through the fire and a nuclear bunker of all places. He'd told John as much once and the older man had merely smiled and told him, _"You will."_

He unconsciously grasped Sarah's hand in his own. "We just wanted to make sure you're alright."

Kate nodded and tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear, nervously. "I'm a survivor." She went to the fridge. "Would you like a drink?"

"Could I get a water?" Sarah spoke. She was being unusually quiet, but had been sizing the other woman up curiously.

"How far along are you?"

"Six months." Sarah grimaced and lowered herself onto the sofa and pressed a hand against her side. "The baby's giving me fits today."

"You're carrying high." Kate handed her a water bottle. "A boy?"

"Yes," she whispered.

Kyle spread his hands. "Look, the reason we came – "

A heavy knock interrupted him. "Kyle Reese."

Kate flung open the door and immediately backed up at Pops' intimidating size. "Who are you? How did you get in the building?"

Pops regarded Kate with disinterest before addressing Kyle. "We have company."


End file.
